When can JavaScript objects hold up and when do they meet their demise?

Just diving into the world of Javascript, I stumbled upon an intriguing article that discussed the concept of reusing an ajax connection multiple times. The article gave an example:

"You can define an ajax connection once, and reuse it multiple times, starting and stopping it later on."

var myAjaxRequest = A.io.request('test.html', {
    method: 'POST',
    data: {
      key1: 'value1'
    }
});

The article then goes on to explain how the same ajax call can be made again simply by calling:

myAjaxRequest.start();

This got me thinking - what if I had a heavily trafficked auction page where users are constantly interacting with their browsers. Would the myAjaxRequest connection persist through all these interactions? I assume it gets destroyed on page refresh, but are there other factors that may cause its destruction? For instance, let's say the object is created within a YUI sandbox environment.

Answer №1

It's a shame that this question was only answered in the comments, leaving everyone without closure (sorry for the pun). Credit should go to @Šime Vidas and @WaiLam for their contributions, but I will make an attempt to provide a proper answer:

Even if you have a reference to an object stored in a variable like myAjaxRequest, it will continue to occupy memory until the document is no longer loaded. By assigning null to the variable (myAjaxRequest = null) and ensuring there are no other references to the object, the garbage collector can free up the memory previously allocated to store it.

A reference to an object can still exist even if myAjaxRequest is a local variable within a function. For example, the function can return a reference to the local variable as an object property:

function sandbox () {
    var myAjaxRequest = A.io.request(/* constructor... */);

    return {
        myRequest: myAjaxRequest
    };
}

var mySandbox = sandbox();
mySandbox.myRequest.start();

Alternatively, a reference can be returned through a closure mechanism. This article provides an excellent explanation on how closures work: explanation here.

function sandbox () {
    var myAjaxRequest = A.io.request(/* constructor... */);

    return {
        getRequest: function () {
            return myAjaxRequest;
        } 
    };
}

var mySandbox = sandbox();
mySandbox.getRequest().start();

Remember that as long as you hold a reference to an object, it won't be subject to garbage collection. You can safely invoke the start method until the page is unloaded.

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